SOLOMON KING
(aka BLACK AGENT LUCKY KING)
dir. Sal Watts, 1974
84 mins. United States.
In English.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4 – 7:30 PM with Q&A about the restoration of SOLOMON KING from the sole surviving complete print with Deaf Crocodile co-founders Dennis Bartok and Craig Rogers
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24 – 7:30 PM with Q&A featuring Belinda Burton-Watts, actress in SOLOMON KING and widow of filmmaker Sal Watts
His friends call him ‘King”… His enemies call him Tough!
This February, Spectacle is thrilled to host the New York City premiere theatrical engagement of Sal Watts’ long-lost Blaxploitation thriller SOLOMON KING, lovingly restored by Deaf Crocodile Films.
“Don’t you suckers know the days of Uncle Remus and Old Black Joe are gone?” barks ex-CIA operative/ex-Green Beret/nightclub owner Solomon King to a group of gang members at the Sugar Hill Club, in actor/director/writer Sal Watts’s long-lost Black urban crime/action film. In the vein of SHAFT, the film stars Watts as an African American version of James Bond/Matt Helm, seeking revenge for the murder of a former girlfriend. SOLOMON KING is a priceless document of early Seventies Black culture, music and fashion in Oakland – and a powerful metaphor for Black empowerment, with Solomon turning the tables on every duplicitous establishment character he encounters.
Sal Watts’s personal story is even more fascinating. Emerging from grinding poverty and racism in Mississippi, he moved to California and became an incredible creative and entrepreneurial force in Oakland and Los Angeles in the early 1970s. He launched two record labels (Sal/Wa Records and Marsel Records) which showcased the music of local Black performers, and he hosted a local Oakland dance & music TV program called “Soul Is.” His well-known Mr. Sal’s Fashion Stores promoted the work of local Black fashion designers, and he operated several restaurants in the Oakland area. Sadly, Watts’s contributions to film, music and fashion are almost completely unknown today: his businesses collapsed in the 1980s after he served time in prison on tax charges, and he passed away after a long period of poor health in 2003.
This restoration took place with the cooperation of the filmmaker’s widow Belinda Burton-Watts (who appears in the film), utilizing one of the only surviving complete prints of the film from the UCLA Film & TV Archive alongside the original soundtrack elements (which had been stored in Burton-Watts’s closet for several decades).
Special thanks to Dennis Bartok, Craig Rogers and Steve Ryfle.
